


We burn in blood

by howisthataparty



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Blood, The Name of the Rose, comic arc, gun talk, idk this was really hella sad, juvenile pregnant natasha, miscarriage tw, post miscarriage sadness, that drove me crazy, what is nikolai's last name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 06:00:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2299040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howisthataparty/pseuds/howisthataparty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Natasha Romanov rides the wave of what could have been, but what wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We burn in blood

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lion-Hearted Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/540140) by [shooting-stetsons (hulksmashmouth)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulksmashmouth/pseuds/shooting-stetsons). 



> This was partly inspired by the fic Lion-Hearted Girl. I went back and read all the young!Natasha parts in The Name of the Rose and this little drabble was a result.

You can feel snow against your skin in two ways: in the pillowy soft, whispery way that singular flakes tumble together against skin, or the sharp and knife-like way icicles dig and cut like the splintery bottom of a bare, crude coffin.  
Natasha felt both at the same time, digging into her shins and thighs through thin, army-issue trousers. The razor like snow underneath her legs might has well have been her coffin. If she had plans to die, which she doesn’t.  
She’s hiding behind clumps of trees about two feet wide - like they will provide any substantial shelter or safety, but she’s learned over her seventeen years to make the most out of what has been thrown at her feet - and more than just the butt of a rifle is weighing down on her stomach. The weight of a man (really just a boy, as she is just a girl) leaning into her is small comfort, small warmth in the sea of slicing cold. Though they’re both hardly beyond the ages of children, they fight and have fought all day and all night and into the next morning like hardened warriors, running with the rising sun and the enemy on their heels.  
There’s black scruff lining the hollows of Nikolai’s cheeks, and there are grey, ashy blots scattered over Natasha’s own cheeks like oversized freckles. Lack of food and sleep is written plainly over the two soldier’s faces. But the can of rations Nikolai shakes to get her attentio makes her more sad than happy. It belonged to Vasilii, the older man laying dead to Nikolai’s right. He’d bled out while they watched, his spirited Russian blood swirling and melting into the cutting and soft snow.  
The past few months have been a storm of different emotions. Love, terror, surprise, want, instinct for survival, determination…….and love. Two different kinds, though. Love for the warmth sitting beside her and telling her all the things he is willing to do for her sake, and what her comrades would do for her sake “if they knew”. The love a black ribbon holding her together embodies. The other kind is much more mysterious, directed towards the nameless entity that Natasha now carries around with her wherever she goes. A body not yet seen and still coming together, a weight with no defined edges.  
A weight that is soon lost to the fog of dreams and fevered hazes and would-have-beens.  
An indiscernible amount of time after the woods, Natasha is bereft of both heavy, warm feelings. The boy is dead, and so is the baby in her arms. Natasha looked at the tiny blue face until she was sick and then wrapped it up with help from the midwife and held it some more. Only a few hours earlier she’d been drowning in red and brown blood, curled around herself in agony and crying burning tears of loss and pain. They did her no good. The baby was dead before she even saw the light of day.  
Even at such a young age, Natasha knew in her heart that something in her had permanently changed after this. A chance had been snatched away from her before it was even really a chance at all. She could have been something, something different, and then it was all gone. Now she would go back to what she’d been before: hard, focused, feeling little, with more determination. Because this hurt like hell.  
This hurt more than snow digging into her. This hurt more than hunger pangs and running until she was drop-dead tired and running more after that. This hurt more than ears numbed by repeated gunshots all through the night.  
When the day was done, a rose, the wispy body of a baby girl, and a black ribbon were buried as deep as the Russian winter would allow.  
To this day, the sight and scent of roses makes Natasha sick, despite all her grandiose molecular enhancements. She shouldn’t get sick at all, but roses are the only things that close up her throat and spin her stomach in circles. Enough shady details are provided to those closest to her in order that they don’t make the huge mistake of subjecting her to the sight of them. Which is, in reality, about three or four people, tops. Several more would understand, but they are buried so far in her past that she couldn’t dig them up now. They aren’t gone, but she doesn’t know if she’d be welcomed.  
But maybe one day, it’s worth a try. Just to say thank you.  
One thing is certain. She will never again be a mother like she was when she was seventeen. Nor does she want to try. She has no innocence now, not like she did then. Some part of her doesn’t want to either, as her mindset guards against weak spots, cracks in her armor.  
There are still afternoons or sunsets where she sits and imagines what it would have been like. To be young and in love. To hold her other half in one arm and her potential in the other, looking into the future without fear. With hope. Staring into the rose-colored sunset and smiling.


End file.
